The similarities between this week’s confrontation between US warships and Iranian speedboats and events off the coast of North Vietnam 44 years ago were too hard for many experts to miss, leading to the question: Is the Strait of Hormuz 2008’s Gulf of Tonkin?

On Aug. 2nd and 4th, 1964, the USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy, patrolling off the North Vietnamese coast, intercepted signals indicating they were under attack. Within days, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which paved the way to the escalation of the Vietnam War. However, as some intelligence agents suspected at the time, the Aug. 2nd attack took place after the USS Maddox fired first, according to a National Security Agency report released in 1995.

This week another NSA report surfaced, confirming suspicions that the Aug. 4th attack never happened.

The researcher who uncovered the most recent NSA assessment tells RAW STORY that the Strait of Hormuz confrontation, and the immediate saber-rattling from the Bush administration and its allies, demonstrates the extent to which officials must be wary about politicizing shaky intelligence in times of war.

“The parallels (between Tonkin and Hormuz) speak for themselves, but what they say is that even the most basic factual assumptions can be made erroneously [or] can prove to be false,” Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, told Raw Story.…

A newly declassified document shows that J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director
of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a plan to suspend habeas corpus
and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty.

Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, 12 days after the
Korean War began. It envisioned putting suspect Americans in military prisons.

Hoover wanted President Harry S. Truman to proclaim the mass arrests necessary
to “protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage.”
The F.B.I would “apprehend all individuals potentially dangerous”
to national security, Hoover’s proposal said. The arrests would be carried
out under “a master warrant attached to a list of names” provided
by the bureau.

The names were part of an index that Hoover had been compiling for years. “The
index now contains approximately twelve thousand individuals, of which approximately
ninety-seven per cent are citizens of the United States,” he wrote.

“In order to make effective these apprehensions, the proclamation suspends
the Writ of Habeas Corpus,” it said.

Habeas corpus, the right to seek relief from illegal detention, has been a
fundamental principle of law for seven centuries. The Bush administration’s
decision to hold suspects for years at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has made
habeas corpus a contentious issue for Congress and the Supreme Court today.

The Constitution says habeas corpus shall not be suspended “unless when
in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.”
The plan proposed by Hoover, the head of the F.B.I.…

“I’m angry! I’m seething with anger! Forty years, and I’m seething with anger!”

Lockwood was aboard the USS Liberty, a super-secret spy ship on station in the eastern Mediterranean, when four Israeli fighter jets flew out of the afternoon sun to strafe and bomb the virtually defenseless vessel on June 8, 1967, the fourth day of what would become known as the Six-Day War.

For Lockwood and many other survivors, the anger is mixed with incredulity: that Israel would attack an important ally, then attribute the attack to a case of mistaken identity by Israeli pilots who had confused the U.S. Navy’s most distinctive ship with an Egyptian horse-cavalry transport that was half its size and had a dissimilar profile. And they’re also incredulous that, for years, their own government would reject their calls for a thorough investigation.

“They tried to lie their way out of it!” Lockwood shouts. “I don’t believe that for a minute! You just don’t shoot at a ship at sea without identifying it, making sure of your target!”

Four decades later, many of the more than two dozen Liberty survivors located and interviewed by the Tribune cannot talk about the attack without shouting or weeping.

Their anger has been stoked by the declassification of government documents and the recollections of former military personnel, including some quoted in this article for the first time, which strengthen doubts about the U.S.…

In American history there are two types of event: ordinary events which the information systems of the country can understand and establish. There are also deep events, or meta-events, which the mainstream information systems of the country cannot digest. I mean by a “deep event” an event in which it is clear from the outset that there are aspects which will not be dealt with in the mainstream media, and will be studied only by those so-called “conspiracy theorists” who specialize in deep history.

The events I shall discuss today exhibit continuities with each other and with other deep events, notably the Iran-Contra affair of the mid 1980s and the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995. But the three I shall discuss today — the JFK assassination, the initial Watergate break-ins, and 9/11 — are outstanding in this respect: that while they were attributed to insignificant and very marginal people, they had momentous impact, far more than most daily events by more important people, in redirecting American history. 1

If history is what is recorded, then deep history is the sum of events which tend to be officially obscured or even suppressed in traditional books and media. Important recent deep events include the political assassinations of the 1960s, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and now 9/11. All these deep events have involved what I call the deep state, that part of the state which is not publicly accountable, and pursues its goals by means which will not be approved… Continue reading →

Federal officials insist that the Oklahoma City bombing case was solved a decade ago. But a Salt Lake City lawyer in search of his brother’s killers has dug up some remarkable clues–on cross-dressing bank robbers, the FBI, and the mysterious third man.

James Ridgeway July/August 2007 Issue–Mother Jones

KENNEY TRENTADUE was driving a 1986 Chevy pickup when he was pulled over at the Mexican border on his way home to San Diego on June 10, 1995. He was dark-haired, 5 feet 8 inches, and well muscled, a former athlete who had picked up construction work after he quit robbing banks. His left forearm bore a dragon tattoo. Highway patrol officers ran his license and found that it had been suspended, and that he was wanted for parole violations. After two months in jail in San Diego, Trentadue was shipped, on August 18, to a prison in Oklahoma City for a hearing on the parole violations. The move placed Kenney in close proximity to the most famous federal prisoner in America. In one way or another, it also sealed his fate.

Four months earlier, another car had been stopped by a state trooper, some 80 miles north of Oklahoma City. It was 10:20 a.m. on April 19, 1995, and much of the country was still waking up to the enormity of what had happened earlier that morning, when an explosives-laden Ryder truck gutted the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. The driver of the 1977 Mercury Marquis was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon and driving without tags.…

Dear all members of the truth movement…………Many of you know me by now, and I have formed a great close relationship with some real passionate Americans who seek the truth like I do for the sick and dying responders of 9/11. On July 21st we will be holding a great event to help ease the pain to some of these brave souls. This event will only be a success if everyone from all 9/11 organizations get involved. Please, I implore all of you to show your support, your passion, and your dedication to this cause. I have stood by your side, and now ask in return you stand by ours. I know many of you are not from New York, but spreading the word, or buying a T-shirtfor this event, will help so many sick and injured responders who desperately need your help. Please feel free to go to the web site or call me direct. Together we all can make a difference.As Americans we have extra money, food, or body parts. So if I can give a kidney, and help hundreds through my foundation, then maybe just maybe you all can help with some grass roots activism and spreading the word of a special date. I personally look forward to meeting many of you who have helped me help others in the past and hopefully in the future.

WASHINGTON – JUNE 22 – The Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation led to official investigations and reforms in the 1970s, according to declassified documents posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden announced today that the Agency is declassifying the full 693-page file amassed on CIA’s illegal activities by order of then-CIA director James Schlesinger in 1973–the so-called “family jewels.” Only a few dozen heavily-censored pages of this file have previously been declassified, although multiple Freedom of Information Act requests have been filed over the years for the documents. Gen. Hayden called today’s release “a glimpse of a very different time and a very different Agency.”

I’m sure General Hayden would like us to take him at his word. But who on earth will believe the CIA has ‘reformed’ itself, when even the mainstream press reports blatantly illegal acts like extraordinary rendition? The worst abuses we never hear about.

The unfortunate truth is that the prescriptive atmosphere in Washington permits ANY abuse of human and civil rights so long as it ‘advances’ the ‘war on terror’. According to this sick mindset, anything LESS than torturing, kidnapping, illegally surveilling and stripping people of their basic human rights would be doing ‘less than everything’ we could to fight terror!

In his first interview as the chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party, Dennis Milligan told a reporter that America needs to be attacked by terrorists so that people will appreciate the work that President Bush has done to protect the country.

“At the end of the day, I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001],” Milligan said to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, “and the naysayers will come around very quickly to appreciate not only the commitment for President Bush, but the sacrifice that has been made by men and women to protect this country.”

Milligan, who was elected as the new chair of the Arkansas Republican Party just two weeks ago, also told the newspaper that he is “150 percent” behind Bush in the war in Iraq.

In his acceptance speech on May 19th, Milligan told his fellow Republicans that it was “time for a rediscovery of our values and our common sense.”

The owner of a water treatment company, Milligan was a relative unknown in Arkansas politics until being elected the party chairman. He had previously served as the party’s treasurer and the Saline County Republican chair.

Book: U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S. Cities to Provoke War With Cuba By David Ruppe

N E W Y O R K, May 1, 2001

In the early 1960s, America’s top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba’s then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.

America’s top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: “We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantánamo Bay and blame Cuba,” and, “casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.”

Details of the plans are described in Body of Secrets (Doubleday), a new book by investigative reporter James Bamford about the history of America’s largest spy agency, the National Security Agency. However, the plans were not connected to the agency, he notes.

The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy’s defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years.

The 1970 killings by National Guardsmen of four students during a peaceful anti-war demonstration at Kent State University have now been shown to be cold-blooded, premeditated official murder. But the definitive proof of this monumental historic reality is not, apparently, worthy of significant analysis or comment in today’s mainstream media.

After 37 years of official denial and cover-up, tape-recorded evidence, that has existed for decades and has been in the possession of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), has finally been made public.

It proves what “conspiracy theorists” have argued since 1970–that there was a direct military order leading to the unprovoked assassination of unarmed students. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documents show collusion between Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes and the FBI that aimed to terrorize anti-war demonstrators and their protests that were raging throughout the nation.

It is difficult to overstate the political and cultural impact of the killing of the four Kent State students and wounding of nine more on May 4, 1970. The nation’s campuses were on fire over Richard Nixon’s illegal invasion of Cambodia. Scores of universities were ripped apart by mass demonstrations and student strikes. The ROTC building at Kent burned down. The vast majority of American college campuses were closed in the aftermath, either by student strikes or official edicts.

Nixon was elected president in 1968 claiming to have a “secret plan” to end the war in Southeast Asia. But the revelation that he was in fact… Continue reading →

A retired, senior officer of the nation’s intelligence community has confirmed to this newspaper that the German military-intelligence operative, Andreas Strassmeir, was in fact “working for the German government and the FBI” while residing at the neo-Nazi compound known as Elohim City. Strassmeir resided at this compound for four years and closely associated with members of the neo-Nazi group that planned and conducted the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in downtown Oklahoma City.

This intelligence officer identified a specific document, a post-bombing report, that listed Strassmeir’s role as an agent reporting on neo-Nazi activities as part of a campaign being waged by both German and American governments against such activities. (This newspaper is involved in legal efforts to obtain a copy of this report.)

Twelve years after the April 19 bombing in America’s heartland, this and other recently obtained and compelling evidence confirms what had long been suspected — the bombing was the result of a bungled “sting” operation that sought to disrupt international ties between German and American neo-Nazis. It was a sting operation that went bad, horribly bad.

Strassmeir’s role as a possible German military-intelligence operative in the center of neo-Nazi group responsible for this deadly attack had long puzzled Danny Coulson, one of the three most-senior FBI supervisors in charge of the immediate post-bombing investigation.

In a documentary television program aired by the British Broadcasting Corporation on March 4… Continue reading →

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), the most liberal of the Democratic presidential candidates in the primary field, declared in a letter sent to his Democratic House colleagues this morning that he plans to file articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney.

Kucinich has made ending the war in Iraq the central theme of his campaign. He has even taken aim at the leading Democratic presidential candidates in the field for their votes on authorizing the war.

Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to impeach the president, vice president and “all civil Officers of the United States” for “treason, bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

Sources tell the Sleuth that in light of the mass killings at Virginia Tech Monday, Kucinich’s impeachment plans have been put on hold. There will be no action this week, they say.

Kucinich’s office had no comment on the Congressman’s “Dear Colleague” letter — which apparently was drafted over the weekend, before the school massacre — or on what the focus of articles of impeachment against Cheney would be.

But Kucinich shouldn’t hold his breath on getting anywhere with his impeachment plan. “We’ll see a Kucinich Administration before we’ll see a Cheney impeachment,” quipped one Democratic aide.

Here is the text of his letter, a copy of which was forwarded to the Sleuth:

April 17, 2007

Dear Colleague:

This week I intend to introduce Articles of Impeachment with respect to the conduct of Vice President Cheney.…

The Hidden History of 9-11-2001
Research in Political Economy
2006 Volume 23.
Ed. by Paul Zarembka

Governments have long found it useful to manufacture rationale for pursuing war and repression. The sinking of the Battleship Maine at the outset of the Spanish-American-Cuba War is the classic example. When President Harry Truman wanted to offer assistance to anti-Communist forces in Greece and Turkey in 1947, Republican senator Arthur Vandenburg promised his support if Truman would “scare the hell out of the American people.” In 1962, the Pentagon mounted Operation Northwoods, a plan involving false-flag actions, state-sponsored terrorism and the hijacking of planes on U.S. and Cuban soil designed to generate American public support for an invasion of Cuba. Then there was the case of the distraught young Iraqi woman testifying before U.S. Congressional hearings in the run-up to Gulf War I about babies being tossed out of incubators by Saddam Hussein’s soldiers.

The essays included in The Hidden History of 9-11-2001 lead to the conclusion that the attack on the World Trade Center may have been the biggest false-flag operation of them all. This 2006 issue of Research in Political Economy examines different aspects of 9-11, which, taken together, provide a serious challenge to those who dismiss the possibility that a government-based conspiracy was behind the events of 9-11.

The first section of the journal debunks the information provided by the U.S. government about the number and identity of the hijackers. Following that, other authors provide evidence indicating that it was impossible for the burning jet fuel from the planes to have caused the collapse of the World Trade Center towers; that a series of military war games taking place on 9-11 caused confusion in military circles and prevented normal emergency response operations to kick in; and that the insider trading in the shares of the airlines that were hijacked that day lays open the possibility that huge sums were made by people who were aware in advance of what was coming.…

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) – An anti-Castro militant now in a Texas jail warned the CIA months before the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that fellow exiles were planning such an attack, according to a newly released U.S. government document.

The document shows that Luis Posada Carriles – who had worked for the CIA but was cut off by the agency earlier that year – was secretly telling the CIA that his fellow far-right Cuban exiles opposed to Fidel Castro’s communist government were plotting to bring down a commercial jet.

The document does not say what the CIA did with Posada’s tip. A CIA spokesman said he had no comment on Monday, a federal holiday.

The CIA had extensive contacts with anti-Castro militants and trained some of them, but has denied involvement in the bombing.

The documents were posted online Thursday by the National Security Archive, an independent research institute at George Washington University that seeks to declassify government files through the Freedom of Information Act.

The Cubana Airlines plane, on a flight from Venezuela to Cuba, blew up shortly after taking off from a stopover in Barbados on Oct. 6, 1976, killing all 73 aboard, including Cuba’s Olympic fencing team.

The bombing remains an open wound in Cuba. Weeping relatives of the victims met in a Havana cemetery on Friday, the 30th anniversary of the bombing. They demanded that Posada – who is now 78 and in a Texas detention… Continue reading →

If there was an Achilles heel that would definitely bring down not only the Bush Administration, but every tyrannical mechanism they have constructed in their fraudulent “War on Terror”, would you strike at it? As I scour the web and talk to people in the anti-war movement, I have heard disheartening answers ranging from dismissiveness to fear to willful ignorance. I am referring to attitudes regarding the one event used by the neo-cons and their flag waving supporters to justify endless war, government looting, eroding constitutional freedoms, and everything else under the sun, namely 9/11. What is disheartening is that we are missing out on a golden opportunity to unite and bring down the current reign of tyranny.

In light of probable war in Iran, previous scams in history, such as the Nazi Gleiwitz incident and the Iraqi WMD scam , serve as guides as to what we can watch for as the powers that be prepare a staged provocation to lead America to war. It is time for everyone to drop the dismissive attitude towards the rapidly growing 9/11 truth movement. It is time for people to recognize 9/11 truth’s vital role in preserving liberty and stopping future wars of aggression. It is high time for people in the mainstream anti-war movement to investigate 9/11 and expose the official story for the fraud that it is.

“But 9/11 is a distraction to the larger fight to end the war in Iraq…”

I often hear this objection from people who are ignorant of the relationship between 9/11 and our current situation.…

Since 9/11, numerous authors and researchers have drawn attention to training exercises being conducted or prepared for by the U.S. military and other government agencies at the time of the September 11 attacks. With names like Vigilant Guardian, Global Guardian, Timely Alert II, and Tripod, the question has arisen as to what connection these drills might have had with real-world events that morning.[1]

Editor’s Note:
Profuse thanks to astute 9/11 researcher and cooperativeresearch.org contributor Matthew Everett for allowing us to debut his highly thought-provoking study of the many military exercises preceding 9/11. Not only do these well-documented attack rehearsals belie huge swaths of the official story and the 9/11 Commission’s investigative zeal, their similar protocols offer a suggestive way to re-explore air defense dysfunction on the day itself.

Attention has also been drawn to exercises held prior to 9/11, often bearing an uncanny resemblance to the actual attacks. For example, soon after 9/11 the New Yorker reported: “During the last several years, the government regularly planned for and simulated terrorist attacks, including scenarios that involved multiple-plane hijackings.”[2]USA Today reported: “In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating … hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties. One of the imagined targets was the World Trade Center.”[3]

As I will show in this essay, exercises also took place that bore a chilling resemblance to the… Continue reading →

Editor’s Note:Perhaps another piece of the puzzle for those still wondering why CIA chief George Tenet received Bush’s profuse thanks and the Medal of Freedom instead of 30 to life in Leavenworth.

The feds bungled a key opportunity to possibly nix the 9/11 terror plot, it was reported yesterday.

An Arabic-speaking FBI agent had requested information about a Jan. 5, 2000, Al Qaeda meeting in Malaysia, but the CIA never turned it over, The New Yorker reported.

The ambitious FBI detective, Ali Soufan, was so upset when he eventually got the information – after 9/11 – that he vomited.

Soufan, who had been investigating the 2000 attack on the U.S. Navy destroyer Cole that killed 17 sailors, realized the two plots were linked.

“And if the CIA had not withheld information from him he likely would have drawn the connection months before Sept. 11,” The New Yorker reported. The intelligence Soufan had sought showed that a one-legged jihadi named Khallad – a key Al Qaeda lieutenant linked to the Cole bombing – had attended the Malaysia meeting where the Sept. 11 plot was hatched.

According to the magazine, the CIA also learned in March 2000 that Al Qaeda operative Nawaf Alhazmi was in the United States, but the CIA never alerted the FBI. Alhazmi ended up on the American Airlines flight that crashed into the Pentagon.

The CIA may not have told the FBI about Alhazmi and another Qaeda operative, Khalid… Continue reading →

NINE-ONE-ONE — This three number combination is etched into the public psyche and instantly conjures up images of America’s most recent Day of Infamy. The images of chaos and terror were speedily delivered via satellite to anyone near a television set. At first, these images burst into the minds of the TV audience without context, but television viewers were not left long to worry their beautiful minds with troublesome questions like: “Who perpetrated these crimes?”

The narrative vacuum was quickly filled by the “official” story. This version of the events of 9/11 is forever enshrined in the volume known as The 9/11 Commission Report.

Proceeding apace with the development of the official story was an entire universe of unofficial stories. These alternative points of view were helpfully framed by President George Walker Bush on November 10th, 2001:

“We must speak the truth about terror. Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th; malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists, themselves, away from the guilty.” (1)

More than a few watching the President address the UN that day were puzzled by the phrase “outrageous conspiracy theories” regarding 9/11. As they logged on to their dial-up Internet connections that evening, trying to understand what the President was talking about, they were privy to the nascent chatter that over time has morphed into a kaleidoscope of alternative narratives, fueled by 9/11 skepticism.